The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has accused the All Progressives Congress (APC) of using stolen oil money to buy votes in the October 10 Ondo governorship election.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Sunday declared Governor Rotimi Akeredolu of the APC as the winner of the election. He defeated the candidate of the PDP, Eyitayo Jegede, and Agboola Ajayi of the Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) to second and third positions, respectively.
But the PDP said the APC should not rejoice yet because it was still reviewing the election and make its official position known in due course.
The PDP National Publicity Secretary, while reading a prepared text entitled, “Why We Can’t Congratulate APC Yet,” to journalists in Abuja on Monday, accused the APC of engaging in vote-buying to win the election.
He alleged that a management official of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), through an unnamed northwest APC governor diverted huge amounts of money in dollars to fund the vote-buying.
Ologbondiyan said the chairman of the National Caretaker Committee of the APC, Governor Mai Mala Buni, should clear the legal hurdles surrounding his emergence, instead of begging the PDP for a congratulation.
He said, “The attention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has been drawn to a press conference by the chairman of the contentious National Caretaker Committee of the APC, Governor Mai Mala Buni, wherein he begged the PDP to congratulate the APC over the outcome of the October 10, Ondo governorship election.
“It is indeed ludicrous and completely absurd that Governor Buni is begging for endorsement of the election in spite of his awareness that the internal mechanism that produced his party’s candidate, as presided over by him, was faulty.
“Nigerians already know that the emergence of Governor Mai Buni in the national leadership of his party is a subject of litigation and as such his nomination of any candidate for the election is seen, even among his party members, as a nullity until the court says otherwise.
“It will therefore be pathetic for Governor Mai Buni to attempt to use the PDP to build something on the nothingness of his position in his party. The PDP is too structured as a party to be used by anybody, under any guise, in that regard.
“Perhaps, Governor Buni is not aware that information available in the public space and to the PDP showed that a very top-level management official of the NNPC, through a northwest governor elected on the platform of the APC, diverted huge amounts of money, in dollars, from our nation oil resources to fund vote-buying in the Ondo election.
“Instead of begging the PDP for a congratulatory message, Governor Buni should rather speak to this disturbing stealing of oil money to fund his party’s vote-buying at the expense of Nigerians who are bearing the brunt of the increase in the pump price of fuel and corruption in the oil sector under the APC.”
Ologbondiyan said the PDP would in due course make its official position on the election known.
It, however, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to take steps that would accelerate the amendment of the Electoral Act, which the party noted, was stalled following his failure to sign the amended Act of the National Assembly in 2019.
